This invention relates in general to the transmission of redundant information over multiple communication paths and more particularly to a method and apparatus for communication of dual redundant information over four communication paths, wherein comparisons are made of certain path pairs in order to provide an indication of the goodness or failure of the signal on a given path.
One of the common current methods of utilizing four signal paths to transmit information between dual redundant components is to simply use the paths as two separate pairs. The common method of detecting a failure using this method is to simply compare the information on one of the paths of a given pair with that on the other path of that same pair. If there is disagreement, that pair is determined to be unusable. Both pairs are similarly checked. Reception succeeds if either pair has information from its two paths that agree. While this method does accomplish accurate failure detection and appropriate identification of the remaining valid information source, there are other pair comparisons which could be made and utilized to identify other valid information source combinations.